@etherealxmuses gets the new Amazon Kitty Supernatural verse we were watching; . Tristan -> Charlotte
Tristan Payne had been fighting since before he properly understood what winning meant.
His earliest memories were not memories so much as instincts branded into him. Hunger meant move quickly. Raised voices meant find Remy. Silence meant something worse was coming. Doors were never merely doors. They were exits, barriers, or things that might lock behind him if he was not careful enough.
He had grown up learning that survival belonged to whoever noticed danger first.
There had been no room for softness in the Payne household. No certainty that food would be waiting when morning came, no promise that the person putting a hand near him intended kindness, no adult standing between him and the things a child should never have been expected to endure. Tristan had become that barrier instead. For Remy. For Briana. For anyone smaller, younger, or more vulnerable than himself.
Protecting others had become the closest thing he possessed to a natural language.
Then his body had changed.
He did not remember when it happened.
Sometimes his dreams gave him pieces of it. Human hands slick with blood. A narrow hallway. Remy shouting his name from somewhere Tristan could not reach. Pain tearing through bone, followed by the desperate, impossible wish to become something small enough to escape.
He always woke before the memory finished.
Whatever magic had found him that night had saved him by turning him into something else. A lean black cat with short, weathered fur, a notch missing from one ear, and scars concealed beneath his coat. Only his eyes remained the same: vivid blue, too sharp and painfully aware against the darkness of his face.
He had forgotten the boy he had been in every way that mattered.
His name disappeared first.
All that remained was the certainty that someone was missing.
The feeling had lived beneath his ribs for as long as he could remember, a restless thread tugging him from one place to the next. Tristan had followed it through streets soaked with rain, over rooftops, beneath bridges, and into temporary homes he never allowed himself to trust.
People had tried to claim him before.
Some offered scraps. Some offered warmth. Some left bowls outside and spoke to him in gentle voices as though kindness alone could convince him to stay. Tristan accepted what he needed when hunger outweighed suspicion, but he never remained for long.
The ache always returned.
Another town. Another street. Another night spent watching the world from beneath an abandoned stairwell.
He did not know who he was searching for.
He only knew that he had not found them yet.
That night, rain had darkened his fur and worked its way beneath the shelter of the crumbling stone steps above him. Tristan crouched near the wall with one paw curled protectively around the remains of something barely worth calling a meal. His shoulder hurt from the fight required to keep it. One of his back claws had split. The cold had already begun settling into his joints.
He would survive this too.
Then something inside him pulled tight.
His ears angled forward, searching for a sound that had not reached him through the alley. The rain continued striking pavement. Water continued spilling through a cracked gutter. Nothing moved beyond the occasional shudder of rubbish caught in the wind.
Yet every part of him had gone still.
The thread beneath his ribs was no longer gently urging him onward.
Something touched it from the other end.
Not a voice. Not a word. A need so sudden and raw that Tristan felt it as though it had been pressed directly against his own heartbeat.
His claws dug into the pavement.
There was no warning beyond the violent wrench through his body. Cold stone disappeared beneath his paws. Heat engulfed him. Light burned across his vision while the space around him folded inward, dragging fur, muscle, and bone through something too narrow to contain any of them.
For one horrifying moment, Tristan could not feel the ground.
Then it returned all at once.
He struck polished floorboards shoulder-first, rolled hard across chalk and scattered herbs, and slammed into the leg of a piece of furniture. Something toppled nearby. The sharp scent of smoke and unfamiliar magic flooded his nose.
Tristan was upright before the pain fully registered.
His back arched. Every strand of black fur rose along his spine. His claws extended against the floor as his gaze cut violently around the room.
Walls.
Doors.
Windows.
Possible exits.
Possible threats.
A damaged line of chalk beneath his paws pulsed with fading light. Candles guttered around its edges. Magic hung in the air so thickly that it crawled over his skin like static.
And there was someone else in the room.
Tristan’s blue eyes fixed on the unfamiliar figure beyond the broken circle.
His heart struck hard against his ribs.
What the fuck just happened?
He shifted his weight toward the nearest visible escape, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. Whatever force had dragged him here had done so without his permission, and Tristan had long ago learned that anything capable of taking choice away from him could not be trusted.
The stranger might have caused this.
That possibility should have settled the matter. He should have hissed, found an opening, and disappeared before a hand could close around him.
Instead, the thread inside him went quiet.
The relentless ache that had driven him across every road, through every temporary shelter, and away from every offered home simply stopped.
No pull.
No whisper.
No instinct urging him toward somewhere else.
For the first time in his remembered life, the search was over.
A certainty rose inside him before reason could smother it.
His ears flattened hard against his skull.
He did not know this person. He did not know where he was. He did not understand why the magic in the room settled differently against his skin when his attention remained fixed on her. He certainly did not appreciate that some traitorous part of himself had apparently decided a complete stranger was the answer to a question he could not remember asking.
Tristan took one cautious step backward.
A movement near the edge of the room caught his attention.
His head snapped toward it.
Everything inside him sharpened.
The atmosphere had shifted. It was subtle, nearly hidden beneath the residue of whatever magic had torn him from the alley, but Tristan knew danger. He had known it in human voices before he knew the meanings of their words. He had recognized it in footsteps outside bedroom doors and shadows stretching beneath them.
His body lowered instinctively.
Every reasonable part of him demanded that he find the nearest exit. Whatever had been happening before he arrived was not his concern. He had survived precisely because he knew when to leave before someone else’s trouble swallowed him whole.
Then his gaze flicked back toward the stranger.
The unwanted thought landed with enough force to make him bare his teeth.
Tristan crossed the remains of the chalk circle and placed himself between her and the source of the threat. Magic surged beneath his paws the instant he passed over the broken line.
Light raced through the chalk.
His shadow stretched across the floor, growing longer and broader than the body casting it. For a fractured second, it did not resemble a cat at all.
Broad shoulders. Human hands. A figure standing with the grim, familiar readiness of someone who had spent his entire life becoming a wall between danger and those it wanted.
Pain flashed through Tristan’s skull.
A smaller hand clinging tightly to his own.
We don’t do this unless I’m with you.
The memory vanished before he could catch it.
Tristan staggered, claws scraping across the floorboards, but he refused to retreat. His body remained positioned between the stranger and whatever waited beyond her. He could feel the threat as a pressure behind his eyes, something wrong pressing against the limits of the room.
He did not understand the magic.
He understood his purpose.
It had survived every transformation. Every missing memory. Every year spent wandering without knowing why he could never ignore someone frightened or vulnerable.
Tristan Payne had forgotten his own face.
He had forgotten his name.
He had forgotten the family he had once torn himself apart trying to keep safe.
But he had never forgotten how to stand between someone and the thing coming to hurt them.
His tail lashed once behind him.
This did not mean he trusted her.
It did not mean he accepted whatever invisible connection had wrapped itself around his ribs.
It certainly did not mean he intended to remain once the danger passed.
He had merely been dragged into an unstable room by magic that clearly lacked manners, and now something threatening was close enough to make his skin crawl.
The bond beneath his ribs settled with infuriating warmth.
Tristan’s claws pressed more deeply into the floor.
